Khadar will get his apology and loot after the country’s Supreme Court judged in 2010 that

Canada breached his rights by sending intelligence agents to interrogate him and sharing the results with the United States.

Which is how he ended up in Gitmo, after which he sued the government for C$20 million on grounds of violating his human rights.

The fifteen year old Khadr was working as a bomb-maker apprentice for al Qaeda when he killed the U.S. servicemen with a grenade. The Liberals say he was a child soldier (similar to Mexican drug cartels using underage MS-13 members as hit men so they get easier sentences if caught) who deserves an apology.

Speer’s widow, along with another soldier who was blinded by the grenade attack, filed a wrongful death and injury lawsuit against Khadr in 2014 because they suspected Khadr might receive financial compensation if he was successful in appealing his sentencing.

A U.S. judge awarded the pair $134.2 million in damages in 2015 but the plaintiffs have acknowledged that they don’t expect to receive any of the money because Khadr lives in Canada.

Obama’s War Authorization Limits Ground Forces

by Josh Rogin

I like how this Rogin guy/Bloomberg uses the verb “limits” as if it means something.

Almost six months after the president began using force against the Islamic State advance in Iraq and then in Syria, the White House is ready to ask Congress for formal permission to continue the effort. Until now, the administration has maintained it has enough authority to wage war through the 2001 AUMF on al-Qaeda, the 2002 AUMF regarding Iraq and Article II of the Constitution. But under pressure from Capitol Hill, the White House has now completed the text of a new authorization and could send it to lawmakers as early as Wednesday.

[…]

The president’s AUMF for the fight against Islamic State would restrict the use of ground troops through a prohibition on “enduring offensive ground operations,” but provide several exemptions. First, all existing ground troops, including the 3,000 U.S. military personnel now on the ground in Iraq, would be explicitly excluded from the restrictions. After that, the president would be allowed to deploy new military personnel in several specific roles: advisers, special operations forces, Joint Terminal Attack Controllers to assist U.S. air strikes and Combat Search and Rescue personnel.

The new AUMF would repeal the 2002 AUMF (Iraq; repealed for reasons which will become apparent), but not the 2001 AUMF (al Qaeda).

And here’s the kicker:

There are no geographic limitations, so the administration would be free to expand the war to other countries.

So does this mean that any amount of ground/other troops can go wherever the president directs in the name of engaging ISIS?

In 2009, evil Army psychiatrist Maj. Nidal Hasan, while screaming “Allahu Akbar,” murdered 13 soldiers and wounded 30 others at Fort Hood in Texas. For over five years our military–its commander-in-chief of course is Obama–refused to call this slaughter an act of terror. Instead the Fort Hood shootings were classified as “workplace violence.” This injustice wasn’t just a matter of semantics–some benefits and compensation were withheld from the victims because of the heartless definition.

Of course Obama could have added to his plethora of executive orders by righting this wrong. But he didn’t.

But on Friday, thanks not to Obama but to a change in the legal definition of terrorism by Congress in the National Defense Authorization Act of 2015, the Fort Hood shootings are now classified as terror acts–and the wounded will soon be awarded Purple Hearts.

Hasan, who is now imprisoned on death row at Fort Leavenworth, had communicated with Anwar al-Awlaki, who until his 2011 death was leader of Al Qeada in Yemen. The shrink also had business cards printed with SoA after his name–an acronym for soldier of Allah.

Last year Hasan wrote to the leader of ISIS, telling him, “I formally and humbly request to be made a citizen of the Islamic State.”

Now will Obama himself finally call the Fort Hood murders an act of terror?

“See it
For the same reason no one ever
Pointed a telescope at the sun”
The Clash, Red Angel Dragnet.

The last 100 years can safely be placed into the following eras. World War I (1914-1918), Interwar (1918-1939), World War II (1939-1945), the Cold War (1945-1991), and the present epoch, the Age of Islamic Terror (1991-present). Certainly there were Muslim-inspired terror acts before 1991, such as the assassination of Anwar Sadat ten years earlier by an Islamist. But the Cold War was the driving international political force then.

Now Islamic terror and the rest of the world’s response to it is the global impetus of change, for good or for ill.

And what has happened since 1991? Some of the atrocities include the first World Trade Center attack, Osama bin Laden’s two jihad fatwas, al Qaeda’s African embassy bombings and its bombing of the USS Cole, 9/11, the 2002 Bali bombings, the 3/11 bombings in Madrid, Hamas’ takeover of Gaza, Iran’s pursuit of a nuclear weapon, the 7/7 bombings in London, Hezbollah’s war with Israel, the 2008 Mumbai attacks, Fort Hood, thousands of sectarian murders in Iraq and Pakistan, the Boston Marathon bombings, the rise of Boko Haram in Nigeria, Benghazi, the ascent of the Islamic State in Syria and northern Iraq, and this month’s Charlie Hebdo slaughter in Paris. This rundown reads like a listing of the theaters of conflict during the Second World War.

Sometimes radical Islamists attacks other Muslims, such as last week’s removal from office of the president of Yemen by Iranian-backed Shi’ites.

For the most part world leaders ignore or obfuscate the reality that they are living in the Age of Islamic Terror. President Obama regularly refers to Islamic terror as “violent extremism,” a term that is broad enough to include gang-bang murders on Chicago’s South Side. Great Britain’s prime minister, David Cameron, says his nation is not at war with radical Islam, countering it’s “just a huge challenge our society faces.” But the war is there. Just as the sun is there as well–even if we don’t point a telescope at it.

Five days ago free expression was attacked in Paris when Cherif Kouachi and his brother Said, who were trained by Al Qaeda in Yemen, screamed “Allahu Akbar” (God is great!) while killing 12 people with AK-47s, most of them journalists employed by satire magazine Charlie Hebdo. The terrorists were killed by French police two days later.

Muslim apologists quickly filled the airwaves, explaining that such atrocities are not compatible with Islam and that murderers such as the Kouachi brothers are outliers of the faith–bad apples.

Maybe.

I generally don’t agree with HBO’s Bill Maher, a strident atheist, but when he said last week about Islam, “When there are that many bad apples, there’s something wrong with the orchard,” I have to admit he’s on to something.

Radical Muslims were of course behind the 9/11 attacks in the United States, as well as the 3/11 Mardid and 7/7 London bombings. The jihadists who have seized much of Iraq and Syria–while murdering thousands of Christians and Yazidis–have announced the founding of a new Caliphate. The Fort Hood murderer considered himself a Soldier of Allah. And while western journalists were devoting the lion’s share of its coverage to the Charlie Hebdo killings last week, another Islamist group, Boko Haram, murdered all of the residents–2,000 people–in the Nigerian village of Baga. These are the same criminals who kidnapped 200 teenage Nigeria girls who were the subject of Michelle Obama’s #BringBackOurGirls Twitter campaign. It didn’t work–the teens are still missing.

Islam–you have a problem. Yes, there are many Muslims that I know who like most people, just want to live their lives and be left alone. But my guess is that the radicals oppose them too.

Egypt’s president, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who did his nation and the world a huge service by ousting the Muslim Brotherhood from power, is calling for a “religious revolution” within Islam. In a New Year’s Day speech, Sisi said, “Is it possible that 1.6 billion people should want to kill the rest of the world’s inhabitants—that is 7 billion—so that they themselves may live?”

If the rest of the world’s inhabitants don’t accept Islam, what Sisi said of the radicals very well may be true.

Bartlett:Look, sir, you talk about the high command of the Luftwaffe, then the SS and the Gestapo. To me they’re the same. We’re fighting the bloody lot. There’s only one way to put it, sir. They are the common enemies of everyone who believes in freedom.

The Great Escape 1963

Leonard:…I am clearly not the only person who is tormented by insecurity and has an ego in need of constant validation.

Sheldon:So you admit that you’re an egotist?

Leonard:Yes. (Turning to the audience) My name is Dr Leonard Hofstadter, and I could never please my parents so I need to get all my self-esteem from strangers like you. But he’s worse!

The Big Bang Theory The Cooper-Hofstadter Polarization 2008

Right now the Obama administration is looking to find support in congress and among the American People for a war in Syria. They sent John Kerry on all the Sunday talk shows to make the case for war to the American people.

Under normal circumstances any president, even this one, might expect my support for such an action.

Consider the record in Syria:

Syria is clearly an enemy and have been supporters of terror for a long time.

During the Iraq war Syria was actively supporting the forces fighting and killing Americans as an ally of Al Qaeda and were supplying terrorist in Iraq as late as 2010.

For a very long time Syria has supported Hezbollah a terrorist group that has been a thorn in the side of our ally Israel.

They have supported puppet governments that have undermined freedom in Lebanon that turned that state into a puppet.

They are the staunchest ally of our foe Iran

All of those reasons would have been, in my opinion, more than a sufficient Casus Belli for us. In fact if our army after taking Baghdad pivoted east and took out Assad, or if at any time during our years in Iraq our forces drove to Damascus to bring down his tyranny I would have been all for it. Of course that wasn’t possible, Bush didn’t have such a mandate and Assad was considered “a reformer” by this administration and their friends.

“But DaTechGuy“, you ask, ” If that’s the case how can you oppose the president attacking Assad in Syria now, particularly after he’s used chemical weapons? Are you just a racist bigot who suddenly opposes war just because it’s being waged by the first Black president?”

A person wearing a lab mask then mixes chemicals in a beaker in the glass box, and we see some gas emitting from the beaker. About a minute later, the rabbits start to have random convulsions and then die. The person says: You saw what happened? This will be your fate, you infidel Alawites, I swear by ALLAH to make you die like these rabbits, one minute only after you inhale the gas.

This led to a question about the future of Syria’s minorities such as the Christians. Ahmed, Basah, and Hamid Hassan all agreed – Christians could only live there if they either converted, or paid the ‘Jizyah’ – a special tax levied on non-Muslims in previous centuries in the Middle East. If not said Bahar, they could be killed. (emphasis mine)

When asked why, the answer was, to them, quite simple – because the Prophet Mohammed said so. I was then invited to become a Muslim.

The conversation verged on the surreal. There we were talking in a quite friendly manner, with the occasional joke, about killing people because they wouldn’t pay the Jizyah, which critics regard as effectively obtaining money through menaces.

At the June 15th rally, Sunni Muslim clerics used the word “infidels” to denounce both the Shias fighting to protect Syrian president Bashar al-Assad and the non-Islamists that oppose Mr Morsi at home.

Mr Morsi himself called for foreign intervention in Syria against Mr Assad, leading to a veiled rebuke from the army, which issued an apparently bland but sharp-edged statement the next day stressing that its only role was guarding Egypt’s borders.

These guys are our enemies, they are full-blown Islamists and Al Qaeda, you know the folks who attacked us on 9/11 and now this administration wants to use our air assets to take out military targets that are fighting them in Syria? Seriously?

The reality is Syria is not good, the humanitarian situation is horrific and is going to get worse but if you take nothing else from this piece remember this:

There aren’t a lot of things worse than an anti-US anti-Israel murderous Tyrant who slaughters his own people uses Chemical Weapons in warfare and has a puppet army fighting in Lebanon, in charge of a well armed state with access to the Mediterranean Sea. An Islamic state ruled by and/or allied with Al Qaeda & the Muslim Brotherhood with the resources of a nation-state possessing chemical weapons bordering Israel Iraq & Turkey is one of them.

Any debate involving intervention Syria should start and end with that paragraph. If it doesn’t then it’s not worth having.

Update: Cleaned up the paragraph after the list of reasons to oppose Assad

***********************************************

For the very first time my full weekly paycheck has been achieved on the very first day of a pay week and as you can see I’m well on my way to this month’s mortgage.

Rest assured the lack of urgency to raise a paycheck for the rest of the week won’t result in a lack of effort around here.

I am grateful to all of you who kicked in and Andrea XX should take note one does not have to succeed in one’s major (mine was Computer Science) in order to succeed!

So this will be the last time you see DaTipJar pushed this week, but remember I’m looking to crowd source my radio show’s advertising, so if you’d like me to hit your tip jar for as much as $400 click here.

The very first instinct I had when the revolt began against Assad was: Good! The Syrian people like all others deserve representative government and not dictatorship, plus Assad is allied with Iran and a foe of Israel his departure is a good thing.

Syria being a Russian Client state the direct involvement of the US was not practical even if we were willing.

Then as time when on and things got interesting.

Al Qaeda and Islamist groups became involved in the fighting and instead of a civil war to free Syria from an oppressor it became a war to replace one murderous dictator whose primary ambition is his own power with a groups of people whose primary ambition is to spread Radical Islam.

To me this clinched the situation John McCain not withstanding we certainly didn’t want to get involved in aiding another group that might use our weapons against us or reward us the same way Libya did in Benghazi.

Then came Hezbollah’s involvement and I was torn. The fact Hezbollah was joining in meant they had to divert strength from Lebanon and also meant two of the more nasty Islamist groups were now fighting each other, but it also meant that there would not be a victor meaning the war would continue.

Lebanese Shi’ite group Hezbollah has ordered Palestinian Islamist group Hamas out of Lebanon effective immediately, the Middle East Online news agency reported on Thursday.

The move, the report says, is due to Hamas support for the opposition forces fighting to oust Syrian President Bashar Assad. Both Hezbollah and Syria are allies of Iran, which provides the two with financial and military support.

This sets up the possibility that the greatest threats to Israel and the US will be clashing in Syria & Lebanon, in a long and bitter struggle and moreover as Iran doesn’t want to lose their clients and the Saudis and others want to bleed Iran this has the potential to become a mass killing ground for the most vile and despicable enemies the western world has faced.

And all of it happening without us, or Israel lifting a finger.

For a foe of radical Islam it’s practically a wet dream, we just have to sit back and let them slaughter each other and if one side starts to lose, we aid third parties to reenforce them enough to keep the fight going until the cream of the jihadist crop finds themselves, shot, gassed or blown up.

And at this point where you contemplate the solution to so many problems that pesky Christian belief comes in. The message that all men are children of God, that all lives are of value, that the suffering of the people who simply want to live their lives no matter who is in charge can’t be allowed to continue and that since none of these people are attacking you at this time the self-defense and just war argument don’t apply

That’s when you look at your glee at the death of your enemies and feel ashamed.

My human instinct, my gut instinct is to let these guys slaughter each other till there isn’t a single one left.

I’m no saint and I have plenty of personal sins that I need help (and your prayers) to overcome but the better angels of my nature, informed by Christian belief says we have to work diplomatically to achieve a cease-fire, to feed and shelter those who are being displaced and if we can’t get a cease-fire to put all possible pressure to deprive both sides of arms, weapons and supplies so the slaughter can cease.

I submit and suggest that anyone who claims the least bit of Christianity is ethnically compelled to support the same.

Whether we like it nor not.

Update: A lively debate in comments, among people that generally disagree with me. One might make the case that because we are at war with Al Qaeda & Islamists my argument fails per the just war theory. It’s a fair point to make and I certainly don’t hold it against anyone for thinking and expressing it, but I can’t subscribe to it in this case. Too many people who have nothing to do with our fight are paying the price combined with no direct danger to us in this war trumps this theologically to me.

“They [rebels] are powerful not only because they apparently have very good training and very sophisticated weaponry,” Jawad said, citing the brutality of Chechen fighters among the ranks of the Nusra Front.

“Nusra is strong because [the fighters] are fearless. I can sense that from the way they launch raids against us,” Jawad continued. “It’s like they really don’t care if they die. They are ruthless and fearless.”

Both Jawad and Mahdi confirmed that many of their comrades were killed in ambushes that were strikingly similar to tactics Hezbollah originally devised when it fought the Israeli army in south Lebanon during the occupation and later on during the 2006 summer war.

“There’s a kind of irritating familiarity,” Jawad noted. “Hezbollah taught Hamas all those tactics to fight the Israelis. Hamas apparently decided to transfer their experience to takfiri groups.”

This demonstrates, according to Jawad, that Hezbollah did not have a sectarian agenda.

“We transferred our experience to a Sunni group – Hamas – and they used it train groups that are now fighting us,” he said.

When you live an hour from Boston the word “Chechen” kind of jumps out at you when describing Jihadists but that don’t cancel out these words

I say to you, love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your heavenly Father, for he makes his sun rise on the bad and the good, and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what recompense will you have? Do not the tax collectors do the same?And if you greet your brothers only, what is unusual about that? Do not the pagans do the same?

A dead islamofascist is just a podium to have a rally for islamofascism at the funeral. A convert to christianity, now that sends shivers down the radical imams spines. In practical terms, dead is not the best outcome.

and unnamed reader writes:

I think we’re supposed to pray for their conversion. Years ago, my publisher said the only answer to the war with Islam is to send them Christian missionaries. Only Christians are willing to be martyred and only the Christian religion can effectively neutralize Islam.

It will take a lot of martyrs at first, but if Christians could convert the Roman Empire, they can convert Islam, and it is only then that the war will stop.

I thought my publisher being facetious, but the more time goes on the more I agree.

It’s not entirely true that only Christians are willing to be martyred, the difference is they are willing to martyred themselves without taking people with them.

***************************************

Today is the end of the month and tomorrow is the end of the week which means I have two different goals going on.

As always with the weeks paycheck not yet achieved I’m looking for that $300 a week to get by. As of this writing I’m $142 away meaning unless on big giver comes through I need a lucky seven readers who can spare $20 each to make my paycheck.

But today is also the end of the month and I’m short of my monthly goal by $69. So if I can get 4 of said people to give in or one person put in the full $69 (or actually $75 since the Mortgage bill has gone up 6 bucks as of this month) then the payment is covered.

As always it’s your call, if you’d like to advance conservative writing. Since every visitor doesn’t kick in a penny or two it’s falls upon the willing and the able to do so if they wish.

Manal al-Sharif, you have also met. She’s the young Saudi woman who broke the taboo against driving. She is a heroine throughout the Arab world (and beyond). Here’s something I did not know about her: She was once an Islamist, a supporter of al-Qaeda.

The “turning point” for her, she says, was 9/11. “I saw a man throwing himself from one of the towers. He was escaping the fire. That night, I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t get that man out of my mind. ‘Something is wrong here,’ I thought. ‘No religion on earth can accept such mercilessness and cruelty.’

“So, I saw that my heroes were nothing but bloody terrorists, and that was the turning point in my life.”

The atheist says that God doesn’t exist period, let alone exists in the hearts of men. This woman was an Islamist, a supporter of Al-Qaeda. She was brought up in a religion where the life of the unbeliever was without value and yet, seeing this image something changed inside her.

It’s good to know that even in this horrible event, the seeds of positive change can grow.

…or something. Here are my pictures from “Occupy Boston,” which appears to be a slumber party full of entitled twenty-somethings who don’t understand that their Women’s Studies degrees do not guarantee them an interesting, well-paying job.

The downtown protest group Occupy Boston threw its proverbial doors open yesterday, and played host to supporters of accused terrorist Terak Mehanna, who are looking to raise awareness of the Sudbury man’s upcoming trial.

The Tarek Mehanna Support Committee came to Occupy Boston’s ever-evolving tent city on the Rose Kennedy Greenway to say Mehanna, a Muslim American pharmacist, is a victim of anti-Muslim sentiment.

The U.S. government says Mehanna, 28, provided “material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization,” and acted as a “media wing” for al-Qaeda.

Occupy Boston claims they have no position on Tarek Mehanna, Exit question: Will the same news media that have spent all day asking Rick Perry to distance himself from or denounce pastor Robert Jeffress press the Occupy Boston/Everywhere protestors to denounce or distance themselves from an accused Al Qaeda Terrorist?

1. Gaddafi was an enemy of the United States with the blood of many American’s on his hands.

2. All Peoples deserve the chance for self-determination

3. The president put us all in by saying “Gaddafi must go” so every day he stayed was a day of defeat for the US.

4. The end of the war in Libya is almost certain to have a downward effect on oil prices which means less pain at the pump and a decrease in food inflation.

I must admit I expected partition, the rebels didn’t seem a coherent force and I presumed Gaddafi had sufficient funds for more than 6 months. This is a much better result than a partition and given the choice of the pair we should welcome it.

This is of course doesn’t mean that Libya will be a bed of roses also for several reasons.

1. The Al-Qaeda connection between the Libyan rebels means that we have to thread carefully, we may in fact end up with a government more unfriendly than before and any advanced weaponry captured by the rebels might end up in the wrong hands big time. That is a disaster just waiting to happen and we’d better take steps to be sure it doesn’t.

2. The rebels are not well-organized and the government could go either way.

3. Because of aggressive moves by Sudan and the aid of Niger to Gaddafi we may see a second wider war in the area.

4. There is every possibility that self-determination might become Sharia or a new war with Israel.

Or to put it another way we have no idea exactly how this is going to end up in the long-term.

Now there are several winners here:

1. Libyan rebels: Although aided by NATO air strikes they fought this war pretty much on their own. That is healthy for a new country but NATO gave them just enough help that there is a debt.

2. NATO: The fall of Gaddafi without primary involvement of the US is significant. It gives a morale boost to the alliance while also providing experience to pilots in actual combat situations. This puts them in an excellent position to help steer things in a more positive than negative direction.

3. Obama: He made several missteps and it can credibly be said that we either came late to the game (an early move would have been a win in March) or didn’t belong in the game at all, but the bottom line is that he intervened at the moment that prevented a mass slaughter in Benghazi and (to our knowledge) kept US troops on the whole out of the fight while still achieving his objectives.

4. The US: An enemy is removed and the prestige of the US is maintained without massive intervention by our troops. That’s a win.

Some might consider it wrong to celebrate this or to give Obama any credit. I have to disagree. It doesn’t matter if we belonged there or not or if it was done poorly, the bottom line is this was an US backed war and it ended in a victory for the side we supported and I’ll take it.

Elections or no, politics or no, given the choice of an US defeat than can be blamed on Obama or an US victory that he can take credit for, I’ll take the victory every time.
Update: Steve Benen starts to overplay his hand:

McCain and Graham “commend” everyone except the United States military, and then, even while applauding the developments, take yet another shot at the Obama administration.

Hold on, I thought a major argument by the Administration was that US forces were NOT involved beyond the initial taking out of the airpower and it was NOT a US mission.

the fact of the matter is, the efforts of U.S. forces in are being cited as “a major factor in helping to tilt the balance after months of steady erosion of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s military.”

So apparently taking primary credit when we don’t have boots on the ground or took part in the majority of the fighting is no longer “jingoistic”.

I would also remind our friends on the left that the only reason why Libya garnered some US diplomatic niceties was they abandoned their WMD’s when Gaddafi was terrified of the US after Iraq, and if not for that war which they so opposed, not only would this it have been unlikely that this revolt have even started but if it DID start the Gaddafi government would have certainly used WMD to quash it.

Let’s be blunt, giving the Obama administration its due as I do in this post is not only the right thing but the smart thing. It’s the right thing because they deserve it and its the smart thing for three reasons.

1. It does remove the “petty” charge that is made

2. It is almost certain that the left (which somehow has forgotten the Libyan apologists among them) will oversell the victory

3. By giving Obama the credit and letting him take it, he implicitly becomes responsible for the long term developments in Libya just as the Bush gets credit/blame for long term developments in Iraq.

He can proclaim vindication all he wants, but I doubt it will do him much good politically here at home. And seeing that the US led from behind in this kinetic military action it probably won’t help our standing much in the Arab world. In case you haven’t heard, Arabs now hate the US more than they did when Bush was president. Go figure.

I actually disagree with the last sentence a bit, the Arabs likely hate us just as much as they did before but because they don’t fear Obama as they did Bush they are more likely to express it publicly and act upon that hatred.

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